


step ball change

by ohtempora



Category: 12 Dancing Princesses (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dancing, Fairy Tale Retellings, New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 22:10:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17149988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohtempora/pseuds/ohtempora
Summary: Tonight they're dancing in the ballroom of an old hotel. The July air presses in, the green trees hanging heavy with emerald leaves. There's a line for the club, snaking around the block."No need to wait," the oldest sister says, and each sister echoes her in turn, whispering, their words rustling through the trees. "Remember," she continues. "We mustn't be remembered. Be careful of when you are seen."





	step ball change

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sprl1199](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprl1199/gifts).



> happy yuletide, sprl1199!! 
> 
> for some of the nyc references, please check the end note, since most places referenced are real(ish).

New York City at night is glittery and booze-soaked, women in high high heels tripping over cobblestones, proud young men in painted-on jeans, dance music spilling out from club doors painted black and bolted shut. When it rains the streets glow and the revelers shriek. They hold jackets over their heads, a rare umbrella standing up in the crowd, skidding and dodging the raindrops. They disappear behind bar doors and down steps and into the subway, quick, dark-clad, and out of sight.

The Meatpacking district has the big packed clubs, jamming dancers into warehouse spaces that used to hold cow carcasses, DJs perched high above the crowd. Across town there are bars with oldies and peanut shells on the dance floor, college haunts and European EDM caves in red-lit basements. Old classics that play 80s music and bars with disco balls hanging from the ceiling that blast swing dance and jazz. Speakeasies, tucked behind hot dog shops, where the dancers go to hide at three in the morning, rest their tired feet and drink cocktails priced high as the heavens, kiss with mouths tasting of absinthe and wine. In Brooklyn there are the drug-lit warehouse parties deep off the L train and hotel rooftops overlooking the Manhattan skyline and the bachata bars, the bigger club caves and the dance spots so small they smell of sweat more than ice and rum.

The sisters get off the train at the 18th street ghost station, all twelve of them, holding their heels in their hands as they pad up the stairs and out through the subway grate. They're wearing black, some in sequins, some in silk, and some in velvet. Their faces are veiled behind false eyelashes and strobe highlighter and lipstick. Each sister wears a different shade, if anyone got close enough to all of them to compare. The oldest sister wears oxblood red. The middle twins favor corals. The second-youngest wears a shade of lilac; the second-oldest, shocking pink. There's a sister in a creamy orange stain and a sister in a deep mauve, a sister in a rusty brown and a sister with a mouth that glitters. The littlest sister's lips are black.

It's raining tonight, water hitting the pavement and turning into diamonds. The sisters move easily through the crowds. It's summer and hot and they walk through a passage of piled black trash bags, listen for the swoosh of the train and the honking of yellow cabs. Tonight they're on the west side.

"Do you remember," a middle sister says. "A long time ago. We came here a long time ago. It was different then."

The second-youngest smiles, her pale purple lips curving up. "Oh," she says. "Yes. When gin was illegal."

"I paid that no mind," the middle sister says.

They slip down the curving Meatpacking streets, asphalt turning to cobblestones under their feet. They slipped on shoes when they got aboveground, and they're inches above the ground, steady. They don't teeter. They turn and turn until they're close to the water. It stinks in the summer, salt and fish and city air.

Tonight they're dancing in the ballroom of an old hotel. The July air presses in, the green trees hanging heavy with emerald leaves. There's a line for the club, snaking around the block.

"No need to wait," the oldest sister says, and each sister echoes her in turn, whispering, their words rustling through the trees. "Remember," she continues. "We mustn't be remembered. Be careful of when you are seen."

They slip in past the doors, past the coat check, past the second set of doors. The music is loud, bass heavy and beating through every dancer's heart. Inside there are men to take their hands, cocky and drunk, ready to hold them tight and move their hips. The youngest sister stands on an ottoman until the oldest reprimands her and surveys the crowd, nothing more than a flash of white teeth past her black smiling lips.

"Not bad," she says, and falls off, into the arms of a banker, no prince but a man good enough for a while. Good enough for a dance.

In New York City the clubs close at four. They dance until the end, until the heels of their shoes snap off and their lipstick smudges at the corners. Until their false eyelashes are unstuck and their hands are loose on the waists of their companions. Until the soles of their shoes are worn down. But their feet are steady, always steady, and their twists and turns are sure.

In New York City, it's so easy for twelve girls to slip into the shadows if they want to, so easy to disappear.

New York's full of ghosts, if one peers around the right corner. It's so easy to look.

At four in the morning the lights turn on, and the sisters make their excuses and pick up their broken shoes. They leave the club through the back door, walk under the verdant trees and listen to the sound of the river. They're not drunk, but they smell of the crowd: of liquor, of sweat, of skin.

"I wonder sometimes," the second-youngest sister says, casting a final look towards the water. "I think it must look beautiful in daylight."

"Maybe," the second-oldest says. She follows her sister forwards, as they go east towards the subway. The rain stopped and the streets are wet and glowing with the late-night light. Undeterred, they walk on, with their broken heels in their hands.

They're far from the only dancers heading home in the dark, but they're the most orderly, the most serious, the most drained.

"Maybe," she says again. "One day we'll see."

Someone says that almost every night on the way back home, casting the words out into the city air, a cross between a spell and a wish. The second-youngest sister doesn't mention it. She likes to hear it, to hope.

"Hurry," the oldest sister says. "The sun rises earlier in the summer."

They walk east, and walk east, and slip down to the train through the subway grate. The train pulls into the station and they pay with tokens of the city, with gleaming green leaves snatched from the ground.

On the train, they take a collective breath, slump into each other, lean on shoulders and curl against each other's sides. The middle twins count off stops in unison: five, four, three, two, one, until they're pulling up, minutes away from home.

Their father is still asleep. They're safe until dawn. They climb up the stairs on tip-toe and slip through a cracked door, counting the hours until the sun goes down.

"Maybe Brooklyn, tomorrow," the third sister says, words caught on a yawn.

The eighth sister kicks a shoe under her bed and yanks the blankets up to her chin. "Oh, yes," she says, as the youngest sister turns out the light, her lips stained grey from her midnight-colored lipstick. "More dancing," she says. "Won't that be nice?"

Above them, their father wakes, and one day he'll wake and wonder. But they're safe for another day, safe to dream, safe to dance. Outside on the street the trees rustle with the dawn breeze, but the sisters don't hear it. In their dreams they're dancing, down in Battery Park or up above the traffic on the Highline or on the Promenade, dancing in the daytime, sunlight dappling their arms.

"One day," the second-oldest says, and closes her eyes to dream, too.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [meatpacking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatpacking_District,_Manhattan), where many clubs are - used to be slaughterhouses, now, well, lots of clubs. and shopping, during the daytime.
> 
> [the 18th street station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th_Street_\(IRT_Lexington_Avenue_Line\)) has been closed since 1948, though it is visible, if not accessible, from the 4/5/6.


End file.
